Page 18 of The Sailor in Polynesia
As I sat on the toe rail ofWelina, Jonas paddled closer to me before dropping to his knees on his board.
I gripped the stanchions on either side as Jonas maneuvered my paddleboard to the inside and he crowded it into the right position. I stretched my legs down, but I could barely brush the top of the board with the tip of my toe.
“Can you reach?” His forehead wrinkled in concern.
I weighed my options. It was just a bit too far for me to make it, andWelinadidn’t have a stern platform likeEikdid.
“Hm. Let me try something else.” Odds were pretty good that I would be falling off my paddleboard at some point today—I might as well get it over with. I stood up and walked down the deck until I cleared the two paddleboards. Gripping the shroud, I swung my legs over the lifelines, looked down, and dove.
As warm as it was, the water still held a bit of bite in the early morning. I surfaced and shook the water off my face. Jonas had drifted away fromWelinawith both paddleboards and now he grinned at me.
I took a few strokes to swim over to my board and grip the edge. There was a handle in the center of the board that gave me a perfect holding point. I got halfway up, resting my forearms and chest on the board. “Huh. This is actually pretty stable.” When Jonas didn’t answer, I glanced up.
Jonas looked away quickly and stammered. “Uh, yes, stable...”
Did I have a booger? I swiped at my nose and tried to discreetly wriggle anything out. Hm. Nothing. Why were we back to nervous, shy Jonas again?
I caught his eyes flashing at me once more, and looked down. Oh fudgepuckers. One boob had popped out of my bathing suit top, my nipple peeking out over the material.
I slid back down into the water and readjusted my bikini top to properly cover myself. I should have known better than to dive off the deck, but I’d gotten so used to wearing rash guards for the sun protection.
“Okay, let’s try that again.” I hauled myself up, but this time I kept going and swung my legs up to get fully on the board. I sat up on my knees and checked the girls again. All good.
“I’m up and I’m presentable. Jonas, you can look now.”
He turned back to me, his face flushed.
“No, bring back Jonas! I made it weird now,” I teased.
Jonas gave me a small smile and cleared his throat. He reached over and tapped my leg. “Give me your ankle.” I straightened one leg and he attached the leash of my board to my ankle. He handed me the paddle and my snorkel gear, which I tucked under the bungee on the nose of the board. Jonas then showed me how to stand up, balance myself, and paddle around.
I steadied myself on the board and we set off for the shore.
It was a slow, easy paddle to the motu, and I stepped off into the shallows as my board hit the sand. The inflatable paddleboards were light enough that I could tuck mine under my arm and carry it farther up to drier sand, where it wouldn’t get washed away. We dumped our paddles in the sand and I looked at Jonas.
“First, we need a coconut.” He took off along the beach. The motu was narrow, a small strip of land protecting the lagoon from the ocean. In one direction was a clearing in the trees, where I knew the copra shack was, and a break in the land where the water flowed between motus. We went the other way, where there was more land to explore.
Jonas and I walked side by side. The sand was white and soft, the waves of the lagoon barely a few inches tall, and we shaded our eyes, peering up into the trees to look for coconuts. “Do those work?” I pointed out a tree with three heavy green globes hanging down.
He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Those are okay, but this one...” He pointed off to the side. “This one is better.” The tree he walked toward leaned way over, the trunk running along the beach before swooping toward the sun. That was a better choice; it’d be easier to reach the coconuts.
When we stood under the coconuts, they were further up than I’d thought. Even on his tippy-toes, it was a stretch for Jonas to reach them. But he managed, using a pocketknife to cut the stem. He shook the coconut, and we heard the water sloshing around inside the nut. Jonas tossed it down into the sand, and picked three more.
I scooped a coconut under each arm. “Hmm,” I said. “I think our eyes are bigger than our arms. We can’t carry any more.”
We walked back, past our paddleboards to the husking station. It was a reminder of traditional times, when copra, the fibrous husks of coconuts, used to be the main industry in the islands. Copra was still harvested, dried, and sold in many of the South Pacific islands, but as the population of the villages dwindled due to better opportunities elsewhere, the small islands like Kauehi didn’t produce copra like they used to anymore.
“This is the husking stick.” Jonas stood beside a dark rod sticking out of the sand. If I didn’t know to look for it, I could have easily mistaken it for a slight tree branch. When I looked closer, I saw that the rod was made of metal, the end sticking up sharp and pointed.
Jonas dropped the coconuts by his feet. “Are you ready for your lesson now?” I dropped one of the coconuts from my arms, and it thunked as it hit the ground. The other one I handed to him and he inspected it carefully.
With both hands he held it, bringing it over his head and then down sharply onto the stick. The husk split, the rod embedded in the coconut. Jonas adjusted his fingers, using the crack in the husk to grip and twist. A large chunk of the husk came off and fell to the ground.
He repeated the move two more times until there was only a small strip of husk left, which he grasped with his bare hands and ripped from the nut.
And then all that was left was the husked nut, ready to whack open and drink.
“You make it look so easy.”
